$50 Billion Question: World, Where to Begin?

By GARY ANDREW POOLE

Published: June 5, 2004

COPENHAGEN, May 31—
What would you do with $50 billion? (Assuming that the goal was the benefit of humankind as opposed to owning a personal Lear jet or a tropical island.)

To answer that question, Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and environmental iconoclast, brought eight economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, to this harbor city last week to rank the world's 10 worst problems. Forget politics, they were told, just look at how to get the most bang for the buck. After studying all the contenders and running the numbers, the economic ''dream team'' decided that the best of the worst was controlling the spread of AIDS (worth $27 billion), followed by $12 billion for malnutrition and $13 billion to combat malaria. Spending money on other scourges, like global warming or government corruption, by contrast, would be a bad investment.

The conference, or what some would label a stunt, is characteristic of Mr. Lomborg, who has infuriated environmentalists and captivated the media with his claims that environmental threats are overblown.

During the nearly weeklong ''Copenhagen Consensus'' conference, Mr. Lomborg was on television news every night. Danish newspapers gave him almost as much coverage as the recent royal wedding. A ''counter conference'' was held in a room in the Parliament building, while the country's prime minister and foreign minister gave speeches supporting him.

The fixation on the man, prompted Bruno S. Frey, a Swiss economist who attended the conference, to say he was insulted that the news media kept implying that Mr. Lomborg had manipulated the panel toward an anti-environmental agenda. ''Perhaps Bjorn is a central person in Denmark,'' Mr. Frey told a reporter, ''but internationally there are other important people.''

Mr. Lomborg's critics, and perhaps even the man himself, do not necessarily adopt that view. ''When I am criticized, I don't back down,'' said Mr. Lomborg, 39, who likes to dash around Copenhagen on his bike wearing a bright yellow coat, smiling and waving to passers-by. ''Saying something clearly is considered provocative here.''

Mr. Lomborg, who is the director of the government-supported Environmental Assessment Institute, was actually a Greenpeace activist at one time. He said he set out to refute the claims of skeptics, but ended up being convinced by their arguments. The outcome was a screed against the Chicken Little-view of environmental dangers, ''The Skeptical Environmentalist,'' which was published in 1998 and continues to provoke fierce controversy. (The English version was first published in 2001.)

The Observer of London reported that a ''secret White House memo'' cited Mr. Lomborg's book to help Republicans deflect criticism about their environmental policies. But Mr. Lomberg said: ''If George Bush has read my book, he has read it badly. There are a lot of people who want to misrepresent me.''

Last year a scientific ethics panel accused Mr. Lomborg of ''scientific dishonesty,'' though withdrew its charge after the Danish Ministry of Science rebuked the panel for failing to present sufficient evidence. More recently, his public profile outside of Denmark was raised after Time magazine listed him as one of the world's 100 most influential people in April.

Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Prize winner on the panel, is one of Mr. Lomborg's admirers. Like all the attendees, he was paid $30,000 to attend the conference, which was sponsored by the institute and The Economist magazine. Mr. Smith, whose long gray hair and silver rings give him a striking resemblance to Willie Nelson, said that ranking the world's problems according to cost-benefit analysis seemed like a good first step in making better decisions for the poor.

He acknowledged that such analyses have limitations. For instance, the group wanted to see immigration barriers reduced, he said, but they could not figure out how to spend money effectively. ''The barriers are within the countries, and it is mostly a political problem,'' Mr. Smith said.

For example, he said, in the United States many people oppose immigration because they think it is a burden on the welfare system, even though the numbers ''do not bear it out.'' Likewise, he said, investing in climate change over putting money into fighting hunger and disease is misguided.: ''As energy becomes more scarce, it becomes expensive, and people look at alternatives.''

Thomas C. Schelling, a professor at the University of Maryland who also attended, agreed. ''The worst result of climate change will be the spread of tropical diseases, and we felt money is better spent eliminating the diseases.''

But critics remain suspicious, arguing that the entire gathering was a setup to further Mr. Lomborg's anti-environmentalist agenda. Christian Ege, chairman of the Danish Ecological Council and leader of the counter conference, said: ''Lomborg presents himself as an impartial scholar, drawing conclusions on a well-founded basis. But it is a basis rejected by most of those with knowledge of environmental studies.'' Other critics worry that the conference will turn aid into a simplistic either-or proposition: if it pays to improve the sewage system, children will go without education.